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> Plus, you can always choose to just not use Google.

A customer can, a company cannot. Similarly to how a customer can choose another ISP, but Google cannot choose to just not to business with ISPs: if a business cannot be connected to their customers, that business cannot live.

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But you cannot opt out of being used by google when one of your friends has a gmail account.

I do not think Google peers directly with every ISP in the world. Traffic can take multiple hops.

No but they do have an open peering policy meaning they'll generally peer with anyone who wants to free of charge.

https://peering.google.com/#/options/peering

https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/15169

True, but they need to peer with ISPs directly or indirectly, they can't just not peer with anybody if they still want to be reachable.

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